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News > Latin America

Ecuador Marks End Of Month-Long 'Inti Raymi' Sun God Festival

  • Traditionally, Inti Raymi occurred on the day of the Winter Solstice and was the Incan New Year celebration.

    Traditionally, Inti Raymi occurred on the day of the Winter Solstice and was the Incan New Year celebration. | Photo: Julia Thomas

Published 3 July 2018
Opinion

Traditionally, Inti Raymi occurred on the day of the Winter Solstice and was the Incan New Year celebration.

At 7 a.m. and 7:10 p.m. local time, on 96.7 FM in and around Iluman in Ecuador, you will hear five or six in-depth news reports from communities in northern Ecuador. The stories center on cultural or local politics that impact Kichwa people – and for the past month, nearly all of the daily coverage by reporters Alberto and Segundo has been about Inti Raymi, the Sun God.

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Segundo begins his reporting on foot from the radio station on June 22 with an interview about Inti Raymi preparations with the mayor of Quichinche. He continues on to the larger parochial Otavalo, where communities have come down from neighboring towns wearing regional dress and bringing with them signs and songs from their communities. 

In the bustling plaza, filled with the sound of plucked guitar strings, bells, flutes, regional songs and loudspeaker announcements, Segundo encounters the mayor of the city, partaking in a lively dance on stage, and other government and organization-level event supporters. 

Two buses later, he is sitting next to a river by San Pablo Lake eating traditional potatoes and chicken, shared by a nearby neighborhood initiating a new bathing site for the night's ritual. A downhill walk carries him to a final reporting place by the Peguche waterfall, where bathers will flock in a few hours to commence one of Inti Raymi's best known celebrations.

Fernando, an artisan from Peguche, looks forward to Inti Raymi as his favorite day of the year. At midnight on the Friday after Solstice, he found a spot along the river to bathe in the running waters from the nearby Peguche waterfall. Massive lines of people wound up the grass path – mostly locals, with a sprinkling of tourists and foreigners – and shuffled in and out to take their place in water.

For Radio Iluman, one of many organizations in this region of Ecuador working to strengthen Kichwa identity, discussions and celebrations of Inti Raymi are part of a much longer, storied effort. A former president of the Iluman community estimated that months of planning, dating back to last year, went into coordinating the public celebration in the town on one of the festival's final Sundays and the many days that preceded it.

July 1 marked the end of Inti Raymi, a Kichwa celebration in honor of the God 'Inti,' meaning sun. Throughout June, Kichwa people across Latin America and the world took part in celebrations that range vastly in tradition from place to place. 

Traditionally, Inti Raymi occurred on the day of the Winter Solstice and was the Incan New Year celebration. A continuation of the Incan gathering to honor the sun and pray for good crops, today it is carried forward by region-specific traditions, dress and events to dance out bad energy and reenergize; fill plazas with local people; dance; drink puro, and eat in the style of pambamesas while moving door-to-door among friends and family. 

Practices vary across communities, but a prominent public event in Cotacachi closed out the month with a day dedicated to a women's taking of the town's central plaza. 

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